AEGUMENT OF SIR WILLIAM EOBSON. 1873 



Is what he told the Secretary of State at Washington. The Secre- 

 tary of State at Washington was told exactly what Mr. Baker was 

 told and what, I think, Mr. Adams would also be told, though he 

 might not have carried it in his mind. Why did not Mr. Adams 

 carry it in his mind? I think there is a very clear reason. He was 

 not a concise letter writer ; I wish he had been ; he writes a very long 

 letter and a very rhetorical letter I do not say that in any unpleas- 

 ant sense but a letter dealing in a very argumentative way 

 1133 with the general question as to how far the treaty of 1783 

 had been abrogated. Why was he so anxious about it? Any- 

 body who reads his letter I am certainly not going to read it again 

 will say that he did not know what Great Britain was going to do about 

 the bank fisheries. That is the very position as it was presented to 

 him. He says: "We are told that Great Britain is going to assert 

 her jurisdiction; she will let us go on fishing on the banks, but we 

 have no treaty to that effect ; the treaty of 1783 is gone ; we have not 

 got it renewed by the treaty of 1814, so it is gone ; " and Mr. Adams 

 thought that not merely this little bit of fishing on the south coast 

 of Newfoundland, &c., was in doubt that was not what he was 

 thinking about he was not thinking much about that, but he was 

 alarmed as to where the right to the whole fishery would be if Great 

 Britain asserted her old jurisdiction, a jurisdiction which had ex- 

 tended over the high seas. Great Britain is saying that she will 

 not do that, but Mr. Adams does not trust Great Britain. He is 

 thinking whether they will then be exercising their right of fishing 

 on the banks at the mercy of and in the discretion of Great Britain. 

 She might at any moment say: "I am going to assert my old juris- 

 diction." He was writing with that in his mind. His mind was not 

 particularly directed to bays, and so, when he purports to report 

 the conversation, all he says is: "I asked him if he could, without 

 inconvenience, state the substance of the answer that had been 

 sent " that is of the letter I have just read from Lord Bathurst to 

 Mr. Baker. Mr. Adams writes : 



" I asked him if he could, without inconvenience, state the substance 

 of the answer that had been sent. He said, certainly: it had been 

 that as, on the one hand, Great Britain could not permit the vessels 

 of the United States to fish within the creeks and close upon the 

 shores of the British territories, so. on the other hand, it was by no 

 means her intention to interrupt them in fishing anywhere in the 

 open sea." 



That is very nearly the words of the letter, but we have just one 

 important omission, the word " bays." Lord Bathurst is supposed to 

 be giving the effect of the letter. The word " bays " was certainly 

 in the letter, but Mr. Adams does not report that Lord Bathurst men- 

 tioned bays. I think it is a failure of Mr. Adams's memory, but I 



